Relationship counsellor Nicola Foster believes it's a deep-seated human instinct to want to complete unfinished business. There's a tenacity in us that says maybe this time it will be different, maybe this time the burning need that was not previously met somehow will be. Almost always, it's the triumph of hope over expectation but romantics are big on hope. More realistically, what calls lovers back is the drama, the action, the intense feelings, even if most of them are dark.
One of the reasons I became a relationship therapist, says Foster, is that I was hooked on a dramatic idea of romance. I loved novels like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary. In both those 19th-century classics, the married heroines embark on disastrous love affairs that end in tragedy. Foster says she was enthralled by a notion of love in which the perfect prince would answer her needs. The problem, she came to realise, was not just that no such prince existed, but also that she should be addressing those needs herself.
[
Collection
]
[
|
...
]